Reamde by Neal Stephenson

I first discovered Neal Stephenson some eight years ago when I read his hugely entertaining Baroque Cycle of novels set in the eighteenth century.   This book, by contrast, is as up-to-date as you like.

The book begins in 2010 as Richard Forthrast the black sheep of an Iowa farming familly, is attending the annual familly reunion.   We are then given his back story as follows.   In 1972 Richard had fled across the Canadian border to avoid being drafted for service in Vietnam and used his backwoods skills to make a living first as a hunting guide and then backpacking marijuana from Canada to America using remote hunting trails.   His drugs contact in America is the leader of a motorcycle gang called Chet and when draft dodgers are amnestied by the US government he and Chet use their drug money to renovate a faux French Chateau built by a nineteenth century gold miner in British Columbia to use as a ski resort.   This is successful but not half as lucrative as the online computer game he develops with a Chinese programer.   This brings us back to the re-union and Richard's neice by adoption, an Eritrean refugee named Zula who he invites to visit his ski resort along with her boyfriend Peter an IT consultant from Seattle.   Whilst at the resort Peter meets a Scottish accountant named Wallace to whom, unknown to the others, he has agreed to sell the details of one hundred thousand credit cards that he has hacked from the Net.   Zula returns to Seattle with Peter determined to break off their relationship and so drives to the warehouse that Peter has converted to office/living space to collect her things.   Whilst she is there Wallace turns up demanding a copy of the credit card file as the original has been hijacked and held to ransom by a group of Chinese hackers using a virus named REAMDE.   Peter admits that he does not have a copy and when Wallace tells him that all the hackers are asking is seventy three dollars he says "Pay up".   However, it is not as simple as that.   The method of payment involves playing an online computer game called T'Rain which is the game run by Zula's uncle Richard.   Before they can try to retrieve the files the warehouse is invaded by a Russian gangster called Ivanov accompanied by an entourage of heavies.   It is Ivanov who was really buying the credit cards and he is most displeased with Wallace for losing them.   Needless to say it is all downhill from there.   As if the Russians were not enough in attempting to catch the Chinese hackers they break into a group of Muslim terrorists who are plotting a bombing campaign and we are still not halfway through the book.

I read the hardback edition of REAMDE, one thousand and forty two pages packed with incident and an amazing cast of characters all fleshed out with detail and back story.   What more can I say than this is a thumping good read which kept me turning the pages until forced to stop and got a good bicep work out into the bargain!